


Blood in the Water

by VeteranKlaus



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Drowning, Hurt Alec, Hurt No Comfort, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-28 18:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20068453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: A new case, a new death. They find the body on a stormy night, floating off the beach. Alec finds himself in a horribly familiar situation.





	Blood in the Water

The victim’s a tragically young boy. The only child of a couple visiting Broadchurch, and not the kind of boy to run off like he had. But it had been a week, and the kid hadn’t turned up, and Broadchurch only had so many nooks and crannies for a child unfamiliar with the place to hide in. And why would a kid who had never been to Broadchurch before, who didn’t know the place, who hadn’t been there long enough to make some friends, want to hide in the place for a week?

They all know what happened. It’s glaringly obvious. They just can’t find the body. Until now.

Someone called in about something floating out on the waves - one of those little boats, they said. Or a body. It was too dark to be entirely sure; just something. Alec has grabbed his jacket, shouted for Miller to follow him, and then raced out of the precinct.

He had half assumed that the tide would have brought whatever it was in, washed it up on shore by the time they got there. Such was not the case, and Alec loathes every moment as they get into a boat, him and Ellie, with her steering it. One of his hands grip the side in a death grip, the other holding a torch that he shines this way and that, fumbling to find something sticking out of the water. 

“D’you think it could be?” Ellie asks, raising her voice over the roar of powerful waves, the buffeting wind and the thunder. Alec has half a mind to tell her to turn back before they capsize and drown out here.

”Be what?” He returns, blunt, and continues looking around, rain dripping down his face.

”The boy?” She asks. She grits her teeth, sliding a bit as a wave rocks the boat they’re in. “Maybe we should turn back, sir.”

And he wants to. He very much wants to turn around and stand safely on land, but he spots it, then. A silhouette, floating in the water, face-down. He hollers for Ellie to pick up the speed, and suddenly he’s back in Sandbrook. Rain pouring down mournfully, the water merciless, the body rotting and heavy and just out of reach. But here the water goes much deeper than it did in the river. 

They can’t reach the body from the boat, even with Alec’s long arms and Ellie sailing as close as she can, and he’s overcome by a desperate need to get the poor kid out. _It’s her_, his mind says. _It’s_ _not_, he argues back rationally, but either way another kid is dead, and their body drifts further away with the water, and their family needs this.

Alec tears his jacket off, drops it aside, and hardly hears Ellie over the sound of his own heart, threatening to break the pacemaker. 

The water’s freezing. It steels all warmth in an instant, steels the air from his lungs and threatens to paralyse him, and a wave keeps him under for a second longer. He breaks the surface, gasping and treading water, and Ellie’s pointing at the body with the torch for she knows there’s no use trying to pull him back on the boat; he’s already swimming away.

He’s never been the best swimmer. His family never bothered with lessons, and he only picked it up through random stays near a pool, where he could always touch the bottom. Come to think of it, besides the river during Sandbrook, he doesn’t think he’s ever swam in open water like this.

His hands grab the body. Clutching an arm, and pulling him close. It’s the boy; he can tell even in the poor, fleeting torch light. Dead and pale and heavy, and Alec holds him right to his chest and doesn’t let go, not as a wave crashes over them, right over his head and pulling him down. He kicks his legs and as soon as his head breaks the surface, he gasps for air, only for a wave to reply it with water that burns his throat, and he’s under again. 

He remembers, as if he ever had forgotten, why he hates water. 

Not being able to see a thing, not sure if up is up and down is down, where the surface and where the floor is, only that either could be miles above and below him, or to his right or to his left. You can’t tell with water on a night like this, but the current pulls him this way and that, and he clutches Pippa’s - the boy’s - body to him, and thinks, _not again_.

His lungs burn something fierce, but there’s only more water when he breathes, and water seems to be the only thing that exists. 

A hand grabs the collar of his shirt. Fisting in it, he’s pulled up, up, up, and held above the surface as waves crash against him. Ellie’s yelling curses and demands at him, telling him to get on the boat, but he’d have to let go of the boy to do that.

He thrusts the body upwards, and she grabs it. He goes under but the body gets pulled onto the boat, safe, and at least the family’ll have closure. Closure he couldn’t give before, even if he can’t get out this time.

He supposes that water will always threaten to drown him, Sandbrook or not.


End file.
